A tale of infinite jest..

“Think for a second – what if all the infinitely dense and shifting worlds of stuff inside you every moment of your life turned out now to be somehow fully open and expressible afterward, after what you think of as you has died, because what if afterward now each moment itself is an infinite sea or span or passage of time in which to express it or convey it, and you don’t even need any organized English, you can as they say open the door and be in anyone else’s room in all your own multiform forms and ideas and facets?”

David Foster Wallace, an author of seemingly unstoppable curiosity, imagination and ambition and the writer of critically acclaimed 1996 novel "Infinite Jest," was found dead at his home. The Claremont Police Department said Wallace's wife had called them Friday night, saying she returned home to find that her 46-year-old husband had hanged himself.

"He was the best of our generation, and his death is a loss beyond describing," Richard Powers, winner of the National Book Award in 2006 for the novel "The Echo Maker," told The Associated Press on Sunday.

"I am so sad — stunned — it reminds us all of how fragile we are, and how close at hand the darkness is," said fellow author A.M. Homes, whose books include the novel "The End of Alice" and "The Mistress's Daughter," a memoir. "He was a wonderful writer, a generous friend, and a singular talent."

A native of Ithaca , N.Y. , Wallace was often compared to Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo as an avatar of the Information Age, a visionary and eclectic as hip to ancient Greece and British poetry as he was to computers and television and popular culture. He also wrote often about addiction, depression and suicide, a post-1960s Dystopia in which "irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling."

Wallace's other works include short story collections "Girl With Curious Hair" and "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," and essay collections "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," and "Consider the Lobster."

Poets & Thieves FAQ & YouTube debut

Some of the more common questions imposed on us at Poets & Thieves Quality Secondhand Books include:

• "Oh look, Edith, it's a secondhand book store." [Person pops head inside the door] "How long have you been open?" (Usually since 10am.)
• "Do you mind if I bring my dog inside?"
• "How do you get your books?" (From unsuspecting charities, jails, the infirm, bordellos and Borders. More frequently they're brought to the store by local residents who're moving house or running out of space in their 23-room mansion.)
• "You look much too young to be sell-ing books. Shouldn't you be out horse-playing or spray-painting that graf-fiti non-sense you ruffians special-ize in these decades?"
• "Do you have any Jodi Picoult?" (No.)
• "Are these books organised any particular way?" (Fiction in front, arranged alphabetically from A-Z. Non-Fiction out the back, arranged alphabetically from D-A-H-E-H-B-A-A-K-Z-Y-J-E-W-U-T-U-W-V-B-C-A-K-Y-U-I-E-R-R-R-H-B.)
• "I need a book for my book club. I don't remember the author, or the title. Do you have it?"
•  "Do you have a King James Bible without the apochrypha? And it has to say, on page 516, that the Lord may smite thee, because in one version I have, it says the Lord might smite thee. Do you have change for a coffee?" (Yes.)
• "I lost my King James Bible what you sold me! Have my partner's ukelele as a token of my sorrow. Do you have change for a coffee?"
• "I am a writer. This is a bookstore. Do you mind if I wax prolix for an interminably long period de tempo? Oh, Robert Drewe. Just fabulous. Just exquisite. Just... fabulous."
• "Oh now, this is a cosy little store. Have you been here long?" (Again, since 10am.)
• "How do you manage to maintain your Herculean physique despite sitting behind that desk all day putting books in a database?" (Working in the book trade is physically demanding and requires the sort of stamina, strength and agility more commonly seen in rhythmic gymnasts or synchronised swimmers. You might be placing a copy of Houellebecq's Platform on the shelf and then be called upon to perform a grand battement jeté balancé if the signed J. M. Coetzee topples off the shelf on the other side of the store. Obviously we also see huge muscle-mass gains in a continuous protein-based intravenous food-delivery regimen - a little trick we picked up from other dealers operating more venerable establishments. Never - ever - forget that just because they're borderline comatose they can't take you out.)
• "Do you take EFTPOS?" (No. Swiping a plastic card through a slit is just too anti-climactic.)

In tenuously-related news, Poets & Thieves Quality Secondhand Books are soon to begin filming an propaganda video for the popular internet porn site, YouTube. At this stage we're looking for three buxom wenches aged 18-21 capable of performing under considerable duress and intoxication, three AFL players capable of forming a sentence and a promise from you that you'll forward the end result to all and sundry and all over the interweb; as we stated at the very beginning of this enterprise, the goal is total world domination.